Guns and Drugs
I've often wondered about our legal and social approach to guns, and now with the Assault Weapons Ban expiring, we're looking, I would hope, for new and different approaches to the issue.
Now, if it were entirely up to me, I'd go for an England/Japan-style total ban on personally owned weapons. In those countries, outside of very limited circumstances, it is illegal to own a firearm and certainly illegal to have it outside of a shooting range, unless you are a police officer. Yes, collecting existing firearms would be a problem, and criminals would certainly continue to have access to weapons in the short term and limited access in the long term. But in the long term the number of accidental deaths -- which even gun ownership advocates admit is too high -- would drop, and murder and suicide rates would probably also show benefits. But my view on this is deeply affected, I admit, by the sense of safety I felt in Japan, where crime in general is low and crime against large, white foreigners was nearly unheard of. Still, I'll never forget the yakuza summit which police raided while I was in Japan, from which they confiscated dozens of knives, wooden practice swords, a few longswords (the vast majority of this stuff was in the trunks of their cars, not in the meeting itself) and one handgun. The only people who were killed by firearms in the years I lived in Japan were gangsters. That's something to aspire to, in the long term.
But, for what it's worth, we have that slightly vague 2nd Amendment to the Constitution, and there are arguments in favor of guns that make some sense, even to me. Guns are tools: not an evil or good in themselves, but a tool whose great power is magnified by its ease of use. There are moments when I think that a gun would be a nice thing to have access to, for personal and familial protection, against disorganized crime and organized hate. There are moments when I think about my students, and what an open target we are in academia. Hunting, apparently, is great fun, and around here it's part of an organized attempt to control invasive species. And in my darker moments, the idea that the government has a monopoly of force makes me nervous, too, though the extent to which guns are an answer is a question to which historians have not applied themselves with any rigor, to my knowledge.
[A great deal of the above can be accomplished with a crossbow and a short sword. Granted, it's not as compact, and more training is necessary. I'm probably revealing myself as an historian who came of age in the heyday of Dungeons&Dragons.]
I believe in consensus. I believe in making progress slowly, as long as it's in a positive direction, particularly when complex social and legal issues are at play. And I think that gun control should be considered a national security issue, and discussed with the same urgency as border security, intelligence reform, foreign policy, etc. So here's my suggestion: FDA the BATF.
Healthcare is a fundamental need (it's not a right, yet) and modern medicines are powerful tools -- miraculous when used correctly and devastating when misapplied. Because of the power of medicine to harm as well as heal, access is limited, channeled through professional gatekeepers, and its use is monitored by government and professional agencies. If a drug does more harm than good, it can be recalled or banned; if a drug turns out to do good in more ways than originally intended, its use expands. Drugs that prove safe over the long term, and which are effective in low, safe doses, are available without gatekeeping control,"over the counter" without a prescription. Trickier drugs remain under prescription control, and those with the greatest potential for personal and social harm -- addictive substances -- come under strict institutional monitoring. Most importantly, every drug which comes to market must pass through FDA approval and scheduling.
Yes, there are problems with the model as a functioning system: slipshod doctoring, approval process (delays and shortcuts), corruption and black markets, patents (too long or too short, depending on your perspective), costs, and the potential to abuse even 'safe' medicines. These are not fundamental problems, I think, but rather normal systemic slippage, which can be addressed as they occur.
Another model which might be applied, though there's no clear federal analogue, is driver licensing, which requires study, practice and testing, and which contains multiple levels and categories of licensing specific to the vehicles' weight and features.
How can this model be applied to guns? Gun use falls roughly into six categories:
- personal protection
- hunting
- law enforcement
- military
- criminal
- drama (including historical recreation)
- (not a use category, but ownership category): archival/collection/historical
Most people would fall into the first two categories and be eligible only for the most modest firearms: revolvers, small-caliber/small-clip semiautomatic handguns; breech-loading and repeating rifles; breech-loading shotguns. It may be that those would be collapsed into a"personal use" category, though I think that handguns would be more likely to be useful for protection and rifles/shotguns for hunting, so that there would be some overlap and some exclusivity if they were retained. Concealed weapons should require a considerably higher standard of training, but if they were limited to the modest handguns described, they would present a lesser threat in cases of accidental or malicious use.
Law enforcement weapons would include the previous categories, but would mostly focus on more powerful handguns, particularly the semi-automatics, as well as pump-action shotguns, with semi-automatic rifles and high-powered sniper weapons for special purposes (perhaps a separate level of training/licensing). If the categories are extended to include other forms of weaponry, tear gas and concussion grenades might also fall into that category. One problem I foresee here is the question of private security forces and the weaponry allowed to them. Many years ago I read that the number of private security officers had surpassed the number of police officers in this country. In addition, distinguishing legitimate security forces from militia groups, or gun clubs, could be difficult without clearly articulated standards. My immediate response, to forestall the problem, is to categorically deny non-governmental groups access to even these weapons, but the situation might warrant negotiation on this point.
Military weapons would include almost anything, except for those items restricted by international convention and such limits as we ourselves choose to impose. But those weapons would never be considered personal property, even when individuals were properly licensed: only the federal government (State Guards, too? probably) would have the right to own such weapons.
The drama category would include weapons that fired only blanks, as well as muzzle-loading historical weapons (which could be loaded only with powder, not shot), and licensing would still be required. The collectors' category is tricky, but I think it might work, in general, to forbid owners of historically or militarily interesting weapons from owning ammunition. Or, if you want to collect ammunition, you don't collect guns (at least not the same ones).
I'm not entirely sure what would fall into the category of a weapon that was more useful for criminals than for military or law enforcement purposes. Even the traditional outlawing of the derringer and single-shot"pen gun" seems to me questionable if they are placed in the personal protection category and require, as with other weapons, specific training. I suppose fully automatic urban weapons like the Uzi or Mac-10 would fit here, though the military might want to keep their options open. At some point we will have to address the question of weapons made of non-metallic composite materials, but that's more a security problem than a gun use problem. Actual gun experts, obviously, as well as amateurs, will need to be involved in the classification process.
Why is this a good system? Because it preserves a right to access while clearly delineating professionalized levels which ordinary citizens need not and should not operate at. Because instead of banning specific weapons or specific features, it requires that any and all weapons pass through the categorization process before reaching the market, and that all users pass through the licensing process before obtaining a gun. The excess firepower in the market would be replaced with much more appropriate weapons, and higher levels of social confidence.
What's the problem? Obviously, any law put in place now which separates current owners from their guns, however inappropriate to their lives and purposes, is going to face resistance and take time to implement properly. This would have to be done in stages of several years each, including amnesty periods in which current gun owners could sell or trade their weapons to more appropriate buyers. Licensing standards would need to be worked out carefully, and with the same presumptions of access as voting standards and driver licensing, which will probably equally offend the ownership and disarmament camps. And it is a government program, which automatically earns the idea demerits in some circles. There are already serious loopholes in the system: gun shows, gun sale licenses in the hands of irresponsible individuals, black and gray markets.As my father says of computers, any sufficiently complex program will have bugs. The loopholes need to be worked out, and gun safety needs to be not just preached, but codified in the same way that automotive safety is. Even if we don't make as radical a change as I'm suggesting, those are still priorities.
The crux, though, is our willingness to address the big questions in a creative and wholehearted fashion. I believe this is a matter of national security. So, here's a starting place. Let's talk.
[NOTE: After an extensive discussion in comments, I've become convinced that recreational hunting should be limited to non-firearms -- bows, crossbows, dartguns, etc. -- because hunting rifles are too easy to use for terroristic/militaristic type attacks. Animal control which requires firearms should be handled by the government or its licensed and bonded agents.